The temperature was hovering around fifty today. It didn’t seem real. It didn’t seam possible. It did feel wonderful though, and as I sat on our deck outside the bedroom early this afternoon, I could feel the sun over my right shoulder. For a few moments when the wind died down, it actually felt warm. I turned to face the sun, and the dim shimmer that I saw made me smile from deep inside a long winter’s heart.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a nasty day, full of sleet, snow, rain and a gusting wind out of the west and the south. I remember only too well how March came roaring in like a lioness on the hunt. The storms were lining up, one after the next, ready to pounce on those still unexpecting souls who were wandering around out in the cold, looking for spring. Well, spring did finally show up three weeks later, but you wouldn’t know it with all the freezing and crunching and slipping and sliding going on. With the snow still piling up, it looked more like winter was just getting under way. The snow banks were high, the driveway was a sheet of snow and ice, the birch trees were bowing their heads, hailing to the one and only King of Winter, the Old Man himself. Each day the sunlight stretched higher , and the shadows grew shorter across the fields of snow, and as the moon made its way around our blue marble once again, March’s final days took shape for 2014.

I’m not sure what the weather holds for the day after tomorrow, but time will tell its tale, and all will be as it should be. Usually, mother nature’s weathered hand deals us in, no matter if we want to play another round or not.

Come on April! Let’s have it already! I’ve been waiting for you since that first day when the thermometer dipped below freezing last November! It’s only been a little more than four months, but it feels like four years, and I feel like four winters have slowly gone by.

I went out back this evening to let the doggies do their business, and I swear I could hear the snow melting. It was a glorious sound, full of life and promises of warmer days. I know that those days full of sunshine are only a few lunar orbits away, but I’m sure they will be greeted this spring with their share of welcoming smiles.

The lambs of spring are poised, ready to graze their way across the coming fields of clover. It might take some time for the color of green to finally show itself, but like always, the painted strokes will come.

The birds seemed more alive today. The cardinal’s song chorused through the morning with a purpose I hadn’t heard since last fall, and as I slowly made my way along the high, narrow path through the snow and approached the bird feeder this morning, a squirrel waited for me on top of the hanging seed house, as if he was letting me know that I was late, and he had a lot of work to do on a warm March day. He finally did jump up and run along the top of the chain link fence, but before I made it half way back to the garage, he was right back there, gobbling up his morning breakfast. The chickadees patiently waited nearby in the apple tree, as they normally tend to do. I love those little guys. They never complain about the falling mercury, the harshness of the winds, or the unforgiving snows and rains. They just keep on being chickadees. How simple is that?

Spring has sprung, and I hope it finally shoves the old geezer out of the way until the colors of fall give way to the old coot once again.

Hey there cousin of mine. I’m gonna break out the rubber ducky and the skiff because it’s melting fast. The end of our driveway is under water, and the sump pump is just kicking into gear. Is this out like a lamb? grin xo dp